Graduate Student In History Research Articles

Research in Progress

Research in Progress Mary Ellen Chijioke and Claire B. Shetter Continuing his interest in the first periods of Quakerism, Douglas Gwyn has recently been spending time at Pendle Hill working on a book on seventeenthcentury Seekers. Those interested in publications of Quaker source material will welcome two projectsbeingundertakenby Patrick J. Nugent (Quaker House, 5615 S. Woodlawn Ave., Chicago, IL 60637), an edition ofthe sermons ofElias Hicks and one ofthe sermons of Lucretia Mott for general readers. Robert K. Webb (3309 Highland Place NW, Washington, DC 20008-3234), emeritus faculty of the University of Maryland, has been drawing on Quaker sources for a book chapter on religious liberty in nineteenth-century England. Michael B. Montgomery, faculty ofthe Department ofEnglish, University of South Carolina (Columbia, SC 29208) has been studying early Quaker correspondence for a book on Colonial American English. Eliza Garfield (13 Ellery St., Apt. 5, Cambridge, MA 02138), student in the Philosophy of Education and Writing at the Harvard Graduate School of Education , is including a dissertation chapter on Quaker ideas ofwriting as illustrated in female and African-American student/teacher writing (essays, journals, letters, etc.). Also in the history of education, Nancy Rosenberg (845 Carroll St., Brooklyn , NY 1 1 2 15) is planning an "ambivalent discourse" on Quaker subtexts and the origins of public schooling in Philadelphia, 1682-1840. Scholars continue to examine Quaker social reform and philanthropy. Leslie Harris (700 Hankin St., Silver Spring, MD 20910), faculty at the University of Maryland, College Park, is studying New York City Quakers and Blacks, 1785— 1863 for a post-doctoral book on the creation of the African-American working class in New York City during that period. Cannella Vemick (303 Hillside Avenue, Jenkintown, PA 19046), Temple University graduate student in Sociology , has been studying the Central Employment Association (of Philadelphia). Cliff Smith has been using his time at Pendle Hill (338 Plush Mill Road, Wallingford, PA 19086) to study Quaker involvements with the Plains Indians from the 1860s to the present. In general civic philanthropy, Maria Crossman (113 Hilltop Court, Langhorne, PA 19047), religion teacher at George School, has been looking forQuakerconnections withthe founding ofthe Philadelphia Zoo in 1859. Dan Konviser (2567 Washington Blvd., Arlington, VA 22201), George Washington University graduate student in History, is studying Quaker pacifism in Britain during World War I. Quakertopics continue to attract scholars in women's studies. Having produced the single most important book on seventeenth-century English Quaker women, Phyllis Mack (334 Graham St., Highland Park, NJ 08904), faculty member in History at Rutgers University, is now studying their daughters and grand-daughters ofthe eighteenth century. Christine Rogers (504 Steven Drive, Apt. F, King 164Quaker History of Prussia, PA 19406), graduate student in History at Villanova University, is developing a topic concerning Quaker women in colonial American society. Johan Winsser (P.O. Box 70, West Cornwall, CT 06796) is writing a more specific article on New England Quaker women Mary Dyer, Ann Burden, etc. Irene P. BarosJohnson (1415 Jamestown Rd., Williamsburg, VA 23185), is funded by a Unitarian Universalist Feminist Theology Award to study contributions of text and texture: Lucretia Mott and the Unitarians. Judith Scheffler (833 S. New St., West Chester, PA 19382), faculty member in the English Department of West Chester University, is preparing a biographical study of Rebecca Lukens. Marjorie King (3338 N. Bentley Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85716), of the History Department, University ofArizona, has been using her time at Pendle Hill to study the Friends Ambulance Unit for a biography ofIda Pruitt. Harriet Monshaw (1768 Lark Lane, Cherry Hill, NJ 08003), ofthe Haddonfield Historical Society, has been tracing the family history ofJohn Gill for a briefbiography ofElizabeth French Gill. Two researchers have been revisiting the life ofBenjamin Lay. Paul Rosier (307 Michigan Ave., Swarthmore, PA 19081), graduate student in History at the University of Rochester, is preparing an entry on Lay for the forthcoming Dictionary of American National Biography. Andreas Mielke (484 Hansen Rd., King ofPrussia, PA 19406) is working on biographies ofboth Benjamin and Sarah Lay. Constance Lezenby (8 Haycroft, Spring House, PA 19477), masters student at Chestnut Hill College, is examining thejournal ofJane Johnson as part ofher study of the process of Quaker journal writing. Herb...

The Front Porch: "Telling about the South"

The Front Porch "Telling about the South" Dixie, the song tells us, is the place where old times are not forgotten . Reminiscence about the past does seem to be a major preoccupation for many inhabitants of the southern cultural landscape. Stock car fans remember Bobby Allison, the UDC remembers the Lost Cause, black Texans remember Juneteenth, and we all have a holiday to remember Dr. King. Spotting an opportunity, some enterprising publishers have created a major industry by helping us to remember important things like the best recipe for mint juleps, or how to add an authentic hot tub wing onto a suburban Big House, or what nice people will be wearing to next year's Collard Festival. Why the South gets so much mileage out of memory is an interesting question . In a good book called Cavalier and Yankee, the critic William Taylor once wrote that southern nostalgia was invented by sentimental northerners, rather than the old folks at home. Long before the Late Unpleasantness, he claimed, go-getting Yankees longed to believe there was still somewhere in America where time stood still, the livin' was easy, and the tensions of urban commerce melted away like a late spring frost. Poets, authors, and song-writers came up with the nodon of a timeless South to satisfy this craving, and an eager public bought it up like hotcakes. As it turned out, quite a few southerners were as eager as anyone else to "remember" the Old South in this way. Were they sentimental too? Maybe. Or maybe they wanted only to justify as "timeless on principle" what some unkind people were beginning to describe as simply "backward." Whatever the reason, southerners have long investments in their memories , but belles in hoop skirts are not the only characters we remember. Memories depend on who does the remembering, and where and when. Memories change—sometimes they fade away, and sometimes they are invented. No single memory of the South exists, any more than there is a single southern culture. Memories get matched one against another and jostle each other for space in our public and personal lives. They get recruited for current agendas, so the future of this or that New South sometimes seems to hang on which memory we pre- 2 Southern Cultures serve about somebody's Old South. Which is the "real" memory of the old plantation , for example: Rhett and Scarlett sparking on the veranda, or Missy and Mammy toiling in bondage out back? Our tourism development boards tend to tilt one way, and many of our school curricula now tilt the other. Controversy over which memories to focus on is not likely to go away in a hurry. Memory, it seems, is essential to identity. We are who we remember ourselves to be. At a time when political controversy surrounding social and cultural identity is running strong, it is probably no accident that interest in southern memory is flourishing as well. As part of this trend, a group of history graduate students at the University of Virginia decided to give the topic a closer look, and held a conference in March 1994 in Charlottesville, Virginia, on the subject of "Social Memory and Southern History." The conference papers explored how southerners' memories about themselves have shaped who they are and who they want to be, and these papers were so interesting that we at Southern Cultures wanted to share at least a few of them with our readers. We are pleased that conference organizers Scot French, Andy Lewis, and Phil Troutman were willing to go along, and help us edit this special issue on southern memory. The papers that we were able to include represent a cross section of the themes and genres explored during the conference; we thank the authors for revising and expanding them for publication. Welcoming participants in the Dome Room of Thomas Jefferson's Rotunda, Professor Ed Ayers led off the conference with a global perspective on the theme of "Memory and the South," and his thoughts begin our issue as well. Next, Scot French asks "What is Social Memory?" and offers an answer to set the topic in a larger context, framing the reflections...

Society in Transition: The Challenge of Diversity in an Era of Scientific and Technological Revolution

Abstract The other day I was talking with a graduate student in history at UCLA. She described a labor historian in her department as an “old neo-Marxist” because he was still working in the tradition of E.P. Thompson, still clinging to the sixties. Meanwhile, she has moved on to post-modernism, and sees these ideas as outdated. I thought, if he is an old neo-Marxist, what does that make me? I never fully cottoned on to the winds of change brought about by Thompson. I may be stuck in the thirties! So what I have to say are the words of a relic. Nevertheless, I shall try to defend that position.

History as Social Criticism: Conversations with Christopher Lasch

As a historian, social critic, and moralist, Christopher Lasch was a powerful presence in American intellectual life. At a time when many historians complained about overspecialization of their discipline and sought opportunities address wider audiences, Lasch brought a historical imagination bear on public controversies about contemporary culture and politics while shaping scholarly debates in American history. In two interviews in July 1993, Lasch reflected on contours of his life's work as a historian and public intellectual and on his relation American progressivism the tradition that most American historians come out of, as he described it. Lasch discussed formative influence of midwestern progressivism he inherited from his parents -the newspaper editor Robert Lasch and social worker and philosopher Zora Schaupp Lasch -and political evolution that led him from liberal realism Marxism and, finally, an indigenous tradition of American social criticism. Throughout his remarks, Lasch returned relationship between historical writing and other literary genres -journalism, fiction, poetry, and criticism -and spoke of his own aspiration to write in such a way that somebody would hear it, so that it might have some influence, however small, on course of events that otherwise just seemed inexorably unfold. The particular context of these interviews and procedures used in editing them require some explanation. At end of spring 1993 semester, Lasch began a leave of absence from history department at University of Rochester in order undergo treatment for cancer. Lasch's illness was occasion for a visit by Casey Blake, Lasch's former student, and (at that time) associate editor of Journal ofAmerican History. Blake interviewed Lasch in his home in Pittsford, New York, onJuly 18. Christopher Phelps, a graduate student in history at University of Rochester, had independently arranged interview Lasch in his home on July 23. Once that interview was completed, Phelps and Blake decided combine their

Understanding Charles Sanders Peirce (In Some Ways)

This book has already received attention in part because it is the first comprehensive biography of one of America's greatest philosophers. It is also because its author was long prevented from working further on what began thirty years ago as a dissertation because he was denied access to, and permission to quote from, the materials he needed, which are owned by Harvard's justly famed Philosophy Department. Apparently, Brent was even told that his chances of academic success would suffer if he pursued the matter. What lies behind this is the following. Harvard acquired Pierce's papers when, upon his death in 1914, Josiah Royce rescued them from the philosopher's crumbling house in rural Pennsylvania. Harvard stoutly maintained thereafter that four boxes of crucial personal materials must be withheld from scrutiny and dissemination in order to protect the sensibilities of Peirce's well-connected Cambridge family, the philosopher's own reputation, and, as Brent slyly notes, perhaps that of Harvard University, whose behavior toward Peirce had never been exemplary (p. 9). As a result, rumors of Peirce's immorality, already rampant in his lifetime, grew after his death like a fungus, as Lewis Mumford put it (p. 9). This condition still obtained in the late fifties when Brent, a graduate student in History at UCLA, decided to write about Peirce's life. The problem by then was not the sensibilities of those connected with Peirce, all of whom had long since died, but the fact that Max H. Fisch had been officially charged by Harvard with writing Peirce's life and providing a canonical interpretation of his works-a monopoly that Fisch protected jealously, even though for over three decades he did not do enough to justify it. Eventually, the Peirce scholar Thomas Sebeok noticed references to Brent's dissertation popping up in the literature, located him at the University of Washington, D.C., and urged Indiana University Press, which is publishing Peirce's complete works, to commission him to finish his biography. Fisch having passed from the scene, the walls of Jericho fell down at Harvard. This book is the result.

Historians and Archivists: A Rationale for Cooperation

InJuly 1992 a small team of historians and archivists gathered at the Bentley Historical Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We had assembled to review graduate history education. As the team considered practical questions about training history graduate students to do research, its members realized that recent developments have greatly complicated those questions. We recognized that major changes are taking place in both the historical and the archival professions. We believe the changes warrant a rethinking both of training for archival research and of the missions of the two professions and the connections between them. This article is based on the report of the team. It reviews the shared past of the two fields, the changes underway in each, and the ways historians and archivists have cooperated. It suggests ways they might renew cooperative efforts to advance their common interest in creating, preserving, and interpreting the documentary record. In recent decades a series of interrelated events has eroded our confidence in universal rules for preserving and telling stories about the past. No longer do people within the historical and archival professions agree that certain principles will ensure good history and good archival practices. Amid the disagreements and debates, both professions are reassessing their role in society. At a fundamental level, the issues and concerns challenging historians and archivists today appear to have many common characteristics. Both professions may therefore benefit from shared analyses of those challenges, and from common efforts to address them. There is a natural partnership between those who decide what evidence will be available and those who decide how to interpret it. We believe that the kind of history that historians now do would be enriched by renewing the partnership that once existed between historians and archivists. And we believe that the work of ar-

Interracial Cooperation in a Decade of Conflict: The Denton (Texas) Christian Women's Inter-racial Fellowship

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsRichard W. ByrdRichard W. Byrd is a graduate student in history at the University of North Texas, Denton, Texas.

“Scientia Pro Patria”:Herbert Baxter Adams and Mugwump Academic Reform at Johns Hopkins, 1876–1901

Two days before the 1884 presidential election, Woodrow Wilson, then a graduate student in history and political science at the Johns Hopkins University, confessed somewhat guiltily to his fiancée that he had been scanning the newspapers on the Lord's Day to gauge the chances of the Democratic candidate. “I am exceedingly hopeful,” he wrote, “though so anxious as to be thankful that there is only a day or two more of suspense. Only my profound trust in an over-ruling Providence will keep me from the deepest despondency, my darling, if Cleveland should be defeated.” Wilson's commitment to Grover Cleveland and his aversion to James G. Blaine were characteristic of the feeling at the university. In the department of historical and political science, headed by thirty-fouryear-old Herbert Baxter Adams, such feeling ran high. Adams, a New England Republican who made no secret of his mugwump convictions, took for granted that his students hoped for a Cleveland victory. The Cleveland motto, “Public Office is a Public Trust”, he reminded them, was a truth as old as Aristotle. On election night, Hopkins men scrutinized the returns into the early morning hours, and lectures the next day were heard with slight attention. Cleveland's inauguration was an occasion for celebration, and Adams, with a large contingent of Hopkinsians, went off on a “spree” to the Capital.

Research in Progress

62Quaker History as No. 7 of the series Philosophiae Spinozae Perennis. This publication is the outcome of Professor Richard Popkin's article on "Spinoza's Relations With The Quakers in Amsterdam" in the spring 1984 issue of Quaker History. As Michael A. Signer says in his Introductory Observations: "The following edition ofA Loving Salutation is based on a comparison of a text printed in Hebrew (1658) which was printed in rabbinic cursive type, and bilingual edition (1660) where Hebrew printed in square letters was set in parallel columns with the English text." For a full discussion of Spinoza's relation to the translation of Margaret Fell's Loving Salutation see Professor Popkin's article in Quaker History, spring 1984, 14-25. Research in Progress Prepared by Claire B. Shetter Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College Swarthmore, Pennsylvania 19081 Charmarie Jenkins Blaisdell, associate professor of History at Northeastern University, Boston, MA, is working on two projects: a biography of Irish Quaker Mary Leadbetter (née Shackleton), 1758-1826, and a comparative study of Irish and colonial American Quaker women in the late 17th and early 18th century, showing the impact of the colonial experience on Quaker women's status and roles. Correspondence will reach her at the Dept. of History, Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA 02115. Material for an article on Samuel Morris and Gwynedd (PA) Monthly Meeting and Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting, is being prepared by William A. Brobst, affiliated with Hope Lodge, Fort Washington, PA. His address is 1 North Main St., Ambler, PA 19002. Other meeting studies are being prepared by Emily R. Myers Lebedda who is compiling material for a history of Birmingham (PA) Meeting, 1825-1865, and whose address is 82 Bullock Rd., P.O. Box 113, Chadds Ford, PA 19317; and Barbara and Michael Preston, of Maurice River (NJ) Friends Meeting (Seaville Monthly Meeting) who are researching their contribution to a Salem Quarterly Meeting history, now planned for publication by a separate committee. Their address is P.O. Box 107, Buckshutem Rd., Mauricetown, NJ 08329. Studies of Quakers and Indian relations are being prepared by Edith Schrot, 402 Laurens St., Olean, NY 14760, of St. Bonaventure University, whose subject is Seneca/Quaker relationships with reference to local flora in southwestern New York State; and Sally Roesch Wagner, of the University of California at Davis, who is currently a research affiliate, preparing material on the subject of Lucretia Mott and the connection between the suffrage movement and the Sénecas. Her address is 4943 Kurz Circle, Carmichael, CA 95608. P. Grover Cleveland is inviting correspondence and information on his topic, the role of Quaker doctors in the American Civil War. "Of particular interest is the role that any Quaker doctors in the South may have played in treating wounded military and civilian casualties." His address is 13173 Omega Ct., Grass Valley, CA 95945. Research in Progress63 Dennis Conrad, of the Rhode Island Historical Society, 110 Benevolent St., Providence, RI 02906, is examining background material for volume 5 of the Nathanael Greene Papers. Greene was a Quaker and an American general in the Revolutionary War who was diswoned for his participatin in the war. There are five studies in progress on Quaker education. A History of Buckingham (PA) Friends School is being prepared by Richard Eldridge, 47 Hillcrest Drive, Doylestown, PA 18907. Leonard S. Kenworthy is at work on a book on Quaker education. His address is 132 Kendal, Kennett Square, PA 19348. John W. Oliver of the history dept. at Malone College, Canton, OH 44709, is preparing a study of J. Walter and Emma Malone, Quaker founders of Cleveland Bible Institute which later became Malone College. Also, histories of William Penn Charter School and Friends Select School are being prepared for anniversary celebrations. Joseph S. Foster, 817 South Leithgow St., Philadelphia, PA 19147, is one of several people doing research for a biographical dictionary of early Pennsylvania legislators, many of whom were Quakers. He is affiliated with Temple University, Philadelphia. Martha J. P. Grundy, a graduate student in history at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, is doing research for her Ph.D. which involves 17 families from Middletown (PA) Monthly Meeting, from 1750 to...

An Interview with Woodrow Borah

HIS interview was conducted by representatives of two generations of students who worked with Woodrow Borah, one in the 196os and one in the 198os. To work with Borah was to be constantly involved in an implicitly intellectual duel wherein students sought to avoid Borah's thrusts with parries and thrusts of their own. Elegance of statement and repartee highlighted Borah's approach. Many history graduate students at Berkeley shied from these gruelling duels, and his seminar students often came from outside the Department of History. While undergraduate students remarked on his reputation as a severe grader, large numbers nevertheless filled his classes to enjoy his trenchant lectures. Woodrow Borah trained in interdisciplinary studies during the 1930s, and belongs to that generation of scholars whose work in the post-World War II decades transformed the study of Latin American Taught by such prominent scholars as Carl 0. Sauer and Lesley Byrd Simpson, he had made their approaches into a bridge for generations emerging from Berkeley in the 196os and 1970s. Within the general tradition of historical inquiry, Borah is an innovator in the use of source material and methodology. He pioneered, with Sherburne F. Cook, the use of time-series statistical documentation and methods of treating it. That he would initiate a revolution in methodology and spark much of the controversy that has occurred within Latin American during the last thirty years, surprises him. He sees his own work conservatively, stressing as he does the fundamental continuity of scholarship as well as the fundamental continuity of Mexican history.

Perspectives on History Education in England

THE CRISIS IN HISTORY has been generally acknowledged and widely discussed by historians and history educators in the United States over the past ten or fifteen years. A variety of studies and reports focusing on the status of history in high schools have suggested that the discipline is in disarray at the pre-collegiate level. Statistics concerning declining numbers of undergraduate history majors, a shrinking population of graduate students in history, and dismal employment prospects for academic historians have supported the perception that history has lost ground, that indeed the future of history teaching is, at best, uncertain. These concerns are not unique to the American context. To some extent, at least, the problems of history education must be viewed as modern problems. The development of the social science disciplines and their subsequent translation into high school courses have certainly contributed to history's situation. Certain social, political, and economic developments during the second half of the twentieth century and the directions they have dictated, e.g. a search for curricular relevance and a demand for courses in special subjects such as career education, consumer education, multicultural studies, and women's studies have also reduced history's importance as the central focus of the social studies curriculum in this country and elsewhere as well.2

The Revolution in Religious Rhetoric: John Wesley and the Evangelical Impact on England

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsFrank R. GrantThe author is a graduate student in History at the University of Montana.

Historical Stages

The contributors to this section are Alex Dupuy, a Haitian graduate student in sociology at Brandeis University; Peter Evans, who teaches sociology at Brown University; Elizabeth Dore, a graduate student in history at Columbia University; and John Weeks, an economist whose previous work dealt largely with Africa and who is currently at the Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

II Imperialism and Dependency

The on-going discussion over the nature of Latin American relationship to imperial ism finds expression in this section in a number of critical essays. David Romagnolo ana lyzes the theory of Permanent Revolution and argues that it has negative implications if employed as a strategy for Latin American revolution. Romagnolo is a graduate student in history at the University of California, Irvine. John Myer assesses the Cardoso variant of dependency theory, arguing that it is not based upon the Marxist class struggle and leads to political inaction. Myer is a graduate student in history at the University of Cali fornia, Irvine. Kyle Steenland, who teaches American Studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo, while disagreeing with Gunder Frank that Chilean agriculture had been capitalist since the conquest, argues that capitalism has characterized the mode of production in Chilean agriculture since 1930. Finally Josd Ocampo responds to the criti cisms of his article (co-authored with Raúl Ferndndez) which appeared in the Spring 1974 issue of Latin American Perspectives. Ocampo is a political scientist at the Universidad Distrital, Bogotá, Columbia.

Introduction

As an overview of the themes which recur throughout this special Chile edition of Latin American Perspectives, this brief introduction attempts to synthesize the political significance of events in Chile since 1970. Norma Chinchilla, who coordinated this Chile issue with Don Bray, is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. Bill Bollinger, a graduate student in history at the University of California, Los Angeles, is presently in Peru to write a social history of Lima and film a documentary.

Why Study History?

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsJon TeafordMr. Jon C. Teaford is a graduate student in history at the University of Wisconsin, where he is completing work for his doctorate.

Thus Wars Are Made

Abstract Yet another book offering “revelations” about the nature and extent of American imperialism is scarcely a noteworthy event any longer, for the past half decade or so has produced an extraordinarily rich body of material on this topic. Practically any American graduate student in history, economics, or international relations should be able at present to offer a formidable reading list on American imperialist development, including at a minimum the radical studies of Williams, Kolko, Magdoff, Baran, and Sweezy as well as the narrower cold war revisionist histories of Alperovitz, Flemming, Horowitz and Lukacs. Quite simply the history of Twentieth Century American imperialism has been sifted and resifted to the point where it is difficult to envision any further benefits to be obtained from going through the problem once again. Nevertheless, this little book deserves more than simply a passing notice.

Strange encounter: the use of study groups with graduate students in history.

Strange encounter: the use of study groups with graduate students in history.

American Radicalism: A Reply to Mr. Radosh

In the February issue, we published an article entitled "American Radicalism: Liberal or Socialist?", by Ronald Radosh, a graduate student in history at the University of Wisconsin. The following reply is by the Managing Editor of Mainstream magazine. Other MR readers are invited to send in their views on the questions at issue between Messrs. Radosh and Forrey. Anyone doing so should indicate whether or not he wants his name to be used. In any case, please make your comments brief. We of course reserve the right to decide what, if anything, should be published. -The. Editors.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

History, Not Art, Not Science, but History: Meanings and Uses of History

A GOOD MANY YEARS AGO when I was a graduate student in history we used to argue whether history was a science or an art. I still hear this argument, an argument that incidentally began with Burckhardt and Croce before I was born. Thirty years ago I thought the argument futile though enlightening. I still do. Because it will serve as a vehicle for ideas I am going to ride it once more in this paper. Historians, like scientists, seek truth and use objective techniques of fact finding and arriving at generalizations. The writing of history has some of the appearances of art. It refines experience and gives it artificial shape and form, a kind of meaningful unity. But as I shall argue here, the study of history is neither fully scientific nor neatly artful. History has its own methods and purposes, its own meanings and uses. History is all that has happened to men; all of man's experiences, all of man's actions, political strivings, economic organizations, social groupings; all of man's ideas, good and bad, logical and illogical. In short, it is everything in man's past. A historian is first of all a technician and a storyteller who tries to recount what happened during some particular time in the past, who puts together the pieces of a period of historical time, or perhaps describes but a segment of this time. A historian is a good historian if like Ssui-ma Ch'ien or Ranke he tries to reconstruct the past as it actually happened, wie es eigentlich gewesen; if like Charles Beard he imaginatively assembles his facts and data while making clear his prejudices and points of view, his frame of reference (one cannot ask that he be just a tabula rasa); and if like Parkman he can so beautifully narrate the events of the past that men will enjoy reading about them. And a historian is a great historian, if like Thucydides, Tacitus, Gibbon, Tocqueville, Burckhardt, and perhaps our own Carl Becker, he can think about the past in so informed a fashion that it not only becomes in a sense recaptured but illumines and makes meaningful the present of his contemporaries and the many presents of those who follow.